


Lights Underground

by megyal



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2039856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megyal/pseuds/megyal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trapped on a mission, Iruka learns a little more about Kakashi.</p><p><b>Prompt/Scenario:</b> #22 by daevilgenius: A heart to heart sort moment between Kakashi and Iruka when they're being held hostage on an ANBU mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lights Underground

**Author's Note:**

> **Contains (Highlight to view):** Mission incidences/injuries; ANBU; Large spiders. Spoilers for Naruto chapter 675.
> 
> Niko Beta is best Beta. I enjoyed trying to write this prompt! I hope you enjoy reading it.

**Contains (Highlight to view):** Mission incidences/injuries; ANBU; Large spiders. Spoilers for Naruto chapter 675.

They threw my limp body into the small dark space, closing the door quickly. I say 'dark' as if there had been lanterns and lamps all along the underground trek, but the entire journey had been without any source of light. However, the person carrying me had moved with confident ease. They crouched low as they ran, despite the fact that I timed the echoes which bounced back from the stony ceiling; the echoes had taken enough time to return for me to calculate that those caverns were extremely voluminous. The room in which we were now imprisoned had a different sound to it, however, indicating a far lower ceiling. In addition, a chill wind cascaded into the space from some high crevice.

I sighed, and then grimaced at the tingling in my arms and legs, which signalled the return of sensation. My chakra, however, remained locked away from my use.

Damned spiders.

"Lynx?" A rough voice spoke up from some corner and I groaned as I managed to sit up. "Is that you?"

"Yes, Captain." I turned in the direction of his voice, wincing at the stripes of pain which burned along the muscles of my arms and legs. "Are you all right?"

There were a few laboured breaths. "Not...really."

The Hound ANBU seemed as if he was located a few paces to my left. I rolled onto my back, gritting my teeth as I did so, and my shoulder scraped down a ragged, rocky plane: the wall of the small cave. My cloak protected my skin from being ripped on the sharpened edges, but I knew that I would end up with bruises. In any case, I was already covered with bruises. A few more wouldn't make much of a difference.

I stretched up my left hand, digging into the rocky crevices with the clawed fingertips of my gloves. Bracing my right hand flat on the floor, I managed to lever myself up into a sitting position. Painfully, I scooted along the hard ground until my foot bumped against something.

"Hope that's you, Captain," I muttered. "It's so damned dark."

"Is... it?" The words, wheezed out between sharp inhales, seemed to have an amused air. "I can... see you. A little."

"That's because you have the vision of a bat, sir," I said, and smiled a little as I heard weak huffs of laughter. I took pleasure in the fact that I could make Captain Hound laugh, even in such a serious situation. The Captain was not a grim man, generally; he said funny things, and seemed willing to be humoured, but he hardly laughed out loud. 

Even as I spoke, I found that my vision began to adjust. A faint green light swam around me, and I glanced up. In the ceiling, which appeared low enough for me to have to crouch if I tried to stand upright, I spotted a rash of small, gleaming objects, shaped like slender hooks. They were bioluminescent insects, I realised. Still and small, they resembled a constellation of jade stars.

I dropped my gaze, finally making out the bone-white curve of Hound's mask. The captain sat with his back against the wall, long legs stretched out in front of him. My foot was fetched up against his closest thigh.

"Captain?" I asked, craning my head towards him. I didn't like the way he sat there, slumped down bonelessly. "How do you feel?"

"Like I...got bitten...nineteen times." His tone remained flat even though his speech was quite labourious. We'd both been attacked by massive spiders, dark-red ones with a stark white hourglass pattern on their backs. These spiders seemed to be working with the tribe we'd been sent to investigate; this tribe, which called itself the Silent Earth, had been blamed for a rash of kidnappings within the region. I was reasonably sure that the Silent Earth wasn't to blame for the missing folks. The neighbouring clans were extremely suspicious because this tribe had apparently lived so long underground that they had lost their sense of vision: Their eyes were covered with a milky film. It was unsettling to behold, I suppose. As a general rule, people don't like different things.

However, when Hound and I approached the caverns of the Silent Earth clan, we were attacked. They must have misunderstood our investigative purposes, or thought we had been sent by the surrounding tribes. Before we got a chance to explain, the spiders had poured out from between fissures in the rocks. Captain Hound had been targeted more. I managed to capture quite a few of them in my traps before I realised that their venom did not only have a paralytic effect, but also served to interrupt the flow of chakra.

The Silent Earth clan and their spiders would be great allies Konoha... if only we could get past this hurdle. We'd have to work on their communication skills.

I snapped my attention to the captain now as he drew a rattling breath and pushed myself around so that I knelt by his side. The heavy, useless feeling in my arms and legs had almost faded completely, leaving behind the six itchy and swollen spots which marked where the spiders had gotten me.

"I think that I'm having a bad reaction." Each word seem to be an intense struggle. "To the spider bites."

That was bad. I clapped my hands together, trying to activate a seal which would block his body's adverse reaction to the venom, but my chakra barely shifted along its paths. That was _very_ bad, because if Hound's chakra was locked away more than mine, then it wouldn't be able to flush through his body and help minimise the effect of the venom.

"Is your chakra moving, sir?" I asked, already knowing the answer. He had gotten more than three times the amount of bites that I had. All of our pouches had been removed by the sightless clan, so none of my helpful pills were on-hand.

"I can't feel it at all," he answered, strangled but level. 

A mix of admiration and panic flowed through me, but I set them aside quickly to clap my palms together again. I dug deep; I was not going to let the great Hound ANBU expire in this mean little cave, not without a fight.

"Lynx," Hound choked. "Be...careful."

"Sir, can you tilt up your mask a bit?" I asked, trying to snatch at any available sliver of my chakra. I only needed a little, but I would need to put my hands directly on the skin of his jaw and neck.

"Lynx--"

"Sir, please." I had already ripped up two chakra pathways, and I could feel them throbbing in betrayed shock. I couldn't help it; I had to get at my chakra in the most direct way possible. My only choice was to bypass that block created by the spiders' venom. At least I could feel mine and grasp at it. Captain Hound could not.

He lifted his hands slowly. They shook almost out of control, but he managed to hook his fingers under the edge of his mask. Hound shoved at it with what seemed to be all his strength. He pushed it right to the top of his head, instead of stopping at an angle which still managed to obscure his face; the dark cloth of his undershirt gathered in limp folds underneath his chin. I spotted a small dark patch on the right side of his neck, but I ignored it for now.

I leaned forward quickly, snapping through hand-symbols and yanking at my chakra as I did so. Placing my hands on the curve of his jaw, I channelled my chakra into the form of a medical jutsu. I could feel it boring into his skin, reluctantly at first, then a bit more willingly. The result was gratifyingly quick: his breathing evened out and the rigid line of his body relaxed. My vision had become acclimated to the green-tinged dimness, enough that I could now see the thin, trembling line of his lips. In a few beats, those tremors diminished and the pinched shape of his mouth smoothed out.

The Hound ANBU, whom I knew well as Jōnin Kakashi Hatake, gave me a very small smile. It was more of a mere twitch of the ruined skin on the sides of his mouth, there and gone again.

"Thank you, Lynx," he said, sounding wonderfully normal to my ears. His entire expression seemed calm and light. "The knowledge of my identity is just a small repayment for saving my life."

I stifled an amused snort. The hair, his lightning-based techniques, and even his codename were a giveaway as to his identity. Most of our adversaries were convinced to lay down their arms just at the mention of his name.

I knew who he was underneath the ANBU mask, but I had never seen him without his everyday mask. His face wasn't that much of a surprise, because the sharp lines of his nose and jaw were easily guessed at under the clinging black material he wore all the time. However, that had obscured the long scars stitching the corners of his mouth; one of them was deep enough to reveal the slight gleam of a tooth. His more prominent scar, the one which had been the bisecting line of his Sharingan, now slid over a left eye just as dark as the right.

I paused and then reached up to span a hand across my own ANBU mask, and removed it from my face. "If that's your criteria, then you should have known my identity years ago, Captain."

He just looked at me for a few long beats and then nodded slowly. 

"Iruka-sensei." 

It was just a statement, a quiet observation, but I would be lying if I said I didn't like the way my name sounded when he said it. Lying through my teeth. He just kept staring at me and I let him, not fidgeting. I'd been trained better than that.

Still, I had to eventually ask: "You didn't know that I was Lynx?"

He started to shake his head, but then stopped.

"I had a suspicion," he answered and I nodded, trying not to feel too disappointed in myself. Part of my whole identity as an ANBU was a near-complete suppression of any trace factors, but mostly scent and chakra. It was how I got close enough to targets to set my traps. Who knew that a skill honed as a young punk would turn out so useful? Yet, if Kakashi had managed to harbour some suspicion, mostly likely through my scent or chakra-shape, then it wasn't that much of a skill after all. 

Kakashi must have picked up on what had been running through my mind, because when he next spoke, he sounded slightly mollifying.

"I haven't had these suspicions for very long...and it wasn't from anything obvious that you did, Iruka." He blinked once, a tired little droop of his eyelids. "Do you remember when we were having that surprise party for Naruto a few months ago?"

"Yes, I do." I remember it mostly because Ino and Sai had taken over with the sort of strategical planning normally reserved for invasions of city-states. We had hidden in one of the Academy's larger inside training rooms, the one that had huge floor to ceiling doors which could fold back to reveal a really nice courtyard. Lee had been tasked to drag Naruto there on the pretext of training. As I stood there in the dark just behind Kakashi and Sasuke, I had tucked my chakra into a mere sliver, wanting to surprise Naruto even more; I had been on a diplomatic exchange, and wasn't expected back so soon. My chakra was as comfortable and familiar as a candle in the window, or so Naruto claimed, so I had done that without really thinking.

Now, Kakashi nodded as, obviously, the realisation struck me.

"I remember feeling your chakra fold away," he said, "And I thought, 'that's exactly how Lynx does it'."

I smiled. "You didn't say anything."

Kakashi's shoulders twitched slightly. "I suppose I was surprised. These days, I don't demand to know the identities of my operatives." He tilted his head slightly, looking very much like a curious puppy. "Didn't think you'd take on these kinds of missions, especially since...that one."

He didn't have to specify which mission he was talking about. It had been one of my first as an ANBU, and the first with him as my captain. It had been disastrous, and although Kakashi had tried to take responsibility, it had been my fault. Sandaime had been kind; he'd said my compassionate nature would be my downfall.

I'd ask to be assigned as an Academy teacher, because I thought I would serve my village better that way. 

"The Hokage asked me to take on a long-term mission," I told Kakashi now. "ANBU protection for Naruto until he got assigned a jōnin-sensei, and I just kept at it, I suppose." I shrugged. "Took on a new code-name and mask."

Kakashi let out a soft laugh, then murmured, "And I had wondered where Blackfish had gone."

I grinned at him; yes, that had been my handle at first, but when I'd been asked to return to ANBU duty, it had already been passed on to someone else. I didn't really mind; I hadn't done justice to the name, anyway. There was currently an ANBU known as Blackfish today, specializing in explosives. In any case, I had been pleased with my new handle.

Kakashi let out a slow breath and then glanced around. "We need to work on getting out of here. List the closest active missions, please."

"Yes, sir." Quickly, I did a mental check through all active missions of which I was aware. Our current location was right at the top border of the Land of Rivers. To the east was the Land of Fire; to the west, more or less, the Land of Wind.

"Sir, Team Shikamaru should be completed with their mission to Ishigakure within three days," I reported. "And If Team Yamato has completed their diplomatic assignment to Sunagakure on time, they should be currently moving through the Land of Rivers."

Kakashi's wandering gaze fixed on me. "Can you do a summons?"

I nodded."I think I have enough chakra for that."

"Then do it. As long as you can manage."

"I can, Captain." I bit the base of my thumb and went through the hand-signs, slapping the palm of my hand to the cold floor. I felt my chakra loop sluggishly outwards into the void, and snag onto something, dragging it back. I heard my own breath stutter and my vision waver; that had taken a lot out of me.

A puff of smoke signalled the arrival of my summons: a small grey cat, blinking large dark eyes. Around her neck hung a miniature version of the hitai-ate, the stylised leaf glinting on the metal section.

"Where's this, Iruka?" Miyu-chan chirped brightly, looking around in her usual curious manner. Her ears twitched. "What a dark place! How did you get in here, anyway?" 

I knew the moment her gaze landed on Kakashi, because her demeanour shifted from one of potential chattering to a shyness so complete that it rendered her momentarily mute. She sidled right up to me and plastered herself against my side, peeking around my waist at Kakashi. She knew him well enough; I mostly used my summons for ANBU missions.

"Hello, Miyu," Kakashi greeted her and my little cat pressed her face against my side without a reply.

"Miyu." I reached down and stroked the space between her ears. She purred deep in the back of her throat. "I need you to find a way out and get the shinobi from our village to our location. Naruto is on a team that should be travelling from west to east a few clicks from here."

"I can do that!" she whispered, gazing up at me. Miyu was the youngest child of the Great Cat Sage, and I'd chosen her because she had seemed so unassuming. More importantly, Miyu chose me because we had the same eyes, as she claimed.

"I think there's probably some hole a little way above Iruka," Kakashi said. Miyu butted her head against my hand and then clambered onto my shoulder. She was as light as a thought.

"Be on high alert," I said. "The people who have trapped us here can't see, but their other senses are most likely heightened."

"And they have spiders," Kakashi added, quite drily.

"Right. Chakra-draining spiders." I leaned my head to one side and pressed my cheek against the curve of her head. Her long, soft fur tickled my skin. "Be quiet and be careful."

"Yes, Iruka." She crawled off my shoulder and I turned to watch her easy progress up the wall. She paused, clinging lightly for a few beats. Then, she leaped up and simply disappeared behind a rocky outcropping.

"Miyu?" I called up, trying to stand. My head spun and I slid down again, still dizzy under the effects of the spiders' venom.

"I'm fine!" Her whisper filtered back. "I will be back soon, Iruka."

I heard nothing else; Miyu was a true nin-neko, and was silent in her movements when she needed to be.

"I think your summons doesn't like me that much," Kakashi said. "She never talks to me."

I couldn't help it. I laughed, and the disgruntled expression on his face didn't help matters much.

"Oh, it's the opposite," I told him, once I managed to get my mirth under control. "Miyu-chan has a crush on you. She thinks you prefer dogs."

Kakashi smiled, very slowly; the scars moved as his lips shifted. It should have looked awful, but it didn't. Not to me. "I'll have to correct that impression when next I see her."

My cheeks felt as if they would be able to light up this little space. "I think she might like that."

Kakashi cleared his throat and looked away from me, and my flushed cheeks cooled down, thankfully.

"Does Naruto know she's your summons?"he asked.

I nodded. "He does."

"So now he'll know that you're ANBU," Kakashi pointed out. I shrugged.

"He probably knows already." I settled back against the cool, rough wall. "Naruto is a lot smarter than people think he is."

Kakashi hummed, whether in agreement or dissent, I couldn't tell. "Number one surprising ninja," he concluded, and when I chuckled, a smile flittered across his face.

"I remember when he came home from one of his first missions with you," I said, pulling off the gloves off my right hand and rubbing my bare fingers against the small pebbles on the ground. "His hair was full of tree-sap. I had to shave it all off. Apparently, he got stuck in some evil tree?"

"Ahhh, yes." Kakashi huffed a little and rested his head back against the wall. He rocked his head slightly from side to side, and again that dark mark caught my eye: it looked like a curving sweep of some letter. A tattoo, then, and from the looks of it, it curved around to the back of his neck. 

"He was fairly upset when we finally got him out," Kakashi continued. He had closed his eyes and seemed unaware of my deepening interest in that dark ink against his pale skin. "It had wrapped itself around him. To this day, I am still not sure how he got himself into it."

"Wait." I held up one hand, and felt my brow wrinkle. "He had been... _inside_ the tree? I thought he meant he'd been up in the branches somewhere!"

Kakashi's smile seemed really soft. "He'd sprung some trap. Sakura got him out of it in time, though." He opened his eyes, and gave me a sidelong, amused, look. "I remember Sasuke mocking him over his bald head. And then Sasuke ended up with bleached blond hair the very next day." His eyebrows winged upwards. "I wonder how Naruto managed that?"

I contrived to appear innocent. I had been nowhere near Sasuke's house that day, and no-one had to know that I'd taught Naruto a very sneaky technique to slowly change the shade of someone's hair as they slept. It was surreptitiously mild enough to catch even someone as cagey as Sasuke. It wore off in a few days, enough to satisfy Naruto's thirst for vengeance. 

"Your tattoo," I blurted, for Kakashi was still giving me that knowing stare. "The one on your neck. What's it for?"

A complicated expression flitted across Kakashi's face, a mix of what seemed to be surprise and chagrin. He reached up and covered the tattoo with his hand, as if to belatedly obscure it from my view.

"I was drunk when I got it," he said and rolled his eyes at my faux-shocked inhale. "I was about twenty, I think. I tend to think of my father when I get drunk. Thankfully, I don't make a habit of that."

"So… the tattoo is about your father?"

Kakashi let out a long, beleaguered sigh. "Apparently--and this is what Genma told me later--I had been going on about my father always being at my back, or something to that effect. Then I made him use his senbon to ink out _The White Fang_. It goes down the back of my shoulder."

"All or nothing, right?" I plastered the biggest, most gleeful grin I could muster on my lips. Kakashi glanced at my heinously ecstatic expression and shook his head.

"It's exceedingly ridiculous," he said, but he sounded as if he was speaking more to himself than me. "Yet, I haven't gotten it removed. So maybe it isn't as ridiculous as I'd like to think."

"I didn't even know you could get drunk." I smiled at the look of surprise he gave me. "I mean… you grow up with people talking about Kakashi of the Sharingan, you build up some preconceptions, you know?"

Kakashi pointed at his left eye. "Not of the Sharingan, any more."

"What's it like?" I asked, and when he blinked at me, I clarified: "Living without the Sharingan, I mean."

"Oh." This was more of an exhalation than an actual word. He tilted his head, thinking. When he did that, he seemed so young and old at the same time. He gazed off into the green-hued gloom.

After a few moments of thought, he focused on me and said, "I miss it, in a way." He fell silent for quite a long time, so much so that I assumed that that single statement was all I would hear of it. I wouldn't really mind, if that was all he wanted to share. Now and again, he still wore his forehead protector at that deep angle, even on regular missions; so I could understand what he meant. "What I _don't_ miss is the depletion of my chakra," he went on to say, and smiled faintly at my low chuckles. "I'm stronger without it. And all those thousands of techniques I had in my head are gone...at least the ones I liked to use the most are easy to recall."

I nodded. His first post-war training exercise had been the talk for weeks among the surviving shinobi and civilians. His lightning techniques had seemed almost mythical in their execution. I knew that the Sharingan had been instrumental in allowing him to accomplish those attacks, but now his experience and sheer power made up for the altered eye.

"You know… I was called 'Kakashi of the Sharingan' more than my own family name," he continued to muse. "For a while after the Sharingan had been removed, I spent a lot of time questioning my identity." He inhaled and said, on a very quiet exhale, "Still do." 

Warmth rushed through my veins at his quiet words. He chose to share something like that with me, and the feeling made me reckless. "Now you're a Hatake again. I think I like that a lot," I declared. Kakashi seemed startled at my statement and looked closely at my face. He said nothing in reply, but just spent a few long moments just studying me. 

"Iruka," he finally begun, but an explosion, muffled by distance, interrupted anything else he meant to say. Kakashi turned his head slightly to the left, listening closely as another explosion occurred, nearer this time.

"I suppose the rescue team has arrived. Was that Naruto?" I guessed with a small smile. I knew well his penchant for the Louder the Better. Kakashi's destroyed lips formed a wide curve. 

"The first was Sasuke, in fact," he responded and his expression gained a seemingly intricate aspect. I felt that Sasuke was both a point of pride and a source of guilt and pain for Kakashi. Then again, that was the Uchiha for you: a raging mess of contrariness.

Like cats.

I opened my mouth to say something, and started as something landed on my head.

"Iruka!" Miyu whispered and crawled forward so that she could lean over and look right in my face, upside down. "They're here! I got them for you! I think Naruto recognized me, but he didn't say anything, he just followed me with the others."

I rubbed her head. "Very well done."

Miyu butted against my fingers, quite pleased with herself. She froze when Kakashi spoke up.

"I agree. You've done a fine job, Miyu-chan." He tilted his head and gave her a sweet smile. I was sure I could feel Miyu melt against the top of my head. "You're quite an impressive summons."

I swelled with pride, even as Miyu stammered, "Th-thank you, Hatake-san!"

"Call me Kakashi," he told her and she whispered the name to herself a few times. I smiled at her little voice; I could probably relate very well to her state of delight right now. Another explosion occurred this time, so close now that the ground shook underneath us, and a spray of rocks rattled against the door.

"Time to go." I fixed my mask back over my face and petted Miyu. She gave my finger a quick nip and then disappeared from this plane in a puff of smoke, but not before chirping her farewell to Kakashi. I'm sure that the next time I summoned her (and I vowed not to wait for a mission), she would be bubbling over with all her observations about him. "Do you need me to help you, Captain?"

"That would be most appreciated." He sounded tired but serene at the same time. I scooted close and plucked at the tumble of cloth under his chin, but he shook his head slightly, his expression calmly amused. I affixed the porcelain mask securely over his face and then sat right beside him, soaking in his warmth along the sides of my arm and thigh. "Thank you, Lynx." 

"You're always welcome, Captain."

His steady breathing hitched for just a beat and I wondered if maybe I went a bit too far with that one. Then, he huffed, a sharp sound of laughter; the nervous fluttering which had suddenly erupted in the pit of my stomach melted away. Around us, the low phosphorescence made me feel as if we were sitting in an endless dream.

Distantly, I heard Naruto's brash bellow: "Hey, Konoha ANBU! You ready to go home?"

"Ready," the Hound ANBU murmured in reply and I smiled.

**fin**

**Author's Note:**

> Remember to leave a comment below, or at the [LJ post](http://kakairu-fest.livejournal.com/126994.html?mode=reply#add_comment)!


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